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My thoughts and feelings on various subjects

Moledro what’s that?

Moledro

“n. a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.”

A beautiful notion I’m sure, it is a new word I learned through an acquaintance on Twitter the day before I left the site for good. 

It’s interesting and inspiring to think that some artists and authors have the skill to be read and noted centuries down the line like this, but it seems only a small margin get the opportunity to have that effect on the world and we will never know if we will be one of those people, for life is cruel and short like that.

Some people are very fortunate in that they could predict they’d be like that someday, because they have been made a big thing of before they die – but most teeter on usually without the vain slither of hope that it will ever be them.

Some, who experience this kind of fame during life, often remain in denial of their talent and so they don’t get to enjoy it whilst they can.

I have experienced moledro with a couple of authors who aren’t widely known or popular – I found their books through Goodreads giveaways before they closed them off to the UK and I found them on kindle really cheap – attempts at vanity publishing, I presumed because they gave up trying traditional publishers after many years of failure.

Here’s one that I can remember Alex Weinle, his book The Decapaphiliac: or love in the time of cappuccinos, it is an anthology of fantasy stories and in my opinion he is very similar to Neil Gaiman, though more macabre.

There are many others that have never been traditionally published where their stories have gripped my imagination so much so, that I still cannot believe why they are not huge household names by now?

An amazing short story I read in a magazine once by an author I can’t remember the name of – where an angel was attacked by a demon on Earth and she had her wings ripped off her and she was found by a mortal man who took her in and had a relationship with her – suffering from depression as she pretends to be a troubled mortal.  Eventually her stepdaughter found her wings in the closet and the story had ended and I thirsted for more.  Why was it so short, why wasn’t this writer known?

Moledro, do you have an infatuation with an author?  Are they still alive?  Are they traditionally published yet?  Let me know in the comments below about any gems you have found and let’s help these people build their confidence as a writer and get them to try again shall we?

Thanks for reading!

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Blogger articles

I have restarted blogger again, with a new look!

My site can be found here https://tardytalk.blogspot.com

This is the place where I will be discussing reviews and views, articles mostly.

However this blog here will always remain because I love it and this is the place where I can be creative but also get personal and emotional with you all. 

Blogger won’t be like that, it will be mostly head over heart if you get me?  I won’t let my emotions get the better of me on there, but it will show you my views on things in general in a dispassionate and balanced way – I hope. 

I used to do a lot of article writing before I moved in with Paul and I kind of miss it, I miss sharing my thoughts on what’s happening in the world.

I used to write mostly about science updates, gardening, wildlife and nature, charity awareness and activism in general usually pertaining to child welfare, domestic abuse and the environment.

But it will also talk about sexuality a lot too so it has an adult only warning thing, because I do a lot of sexual freedom activism, or used to for both the LGBTQ community but also BDSM lifestyle choice and polygamy.

I’m not sure how often I will update it, but I hope to post at least twice a week.

Thanks for reading and please do enjoy my article style blog too!

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

Thanks for being here!

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Technology and specie inclusivity

I like to read from time to time cyberpunk books, so how comes up until recently I have been a luddite?

Although I have read cyberpunk books, bio-punk books and such the likes, I read them with a dim view.  I enjoy those books, but I lived in fear of technology taking over, like it has in many of those books!

I saw those books as a warning sign!

A flag up for society a shout out of do and doom!

Dramatic I know!

But forearmed is forewarned, that was my philosophy anyhow!

You are beginning to see now that I am a frightened creature, a creature that is easily made tensed and living with a sense of perpetual panic… about mostly everything!

You’d be right in thinking I a prepper, because I was a girl guide “be prepared” was our motto too you know!

But just because I read books, doesn’t mean I am very smart in everything.  My intelligence lies with literature in general, languages, the environment, animal welfare and social sciences – not technology!

You can’t learn much from the average cyberpunk and bio-punk novel, other than developing a sense of fear or excitement over it.  It doesn’t tell you how to use twitter set up an YT channel and upload pictures on Instagram.  I wish it did, but there you go!

But I still stand with how deeply concerned I am that as society is progressing to becoming more and more cyber oriented, we are not increasing our understanding of nature and working designs out to be more wildlife inclusive.

Really, you’d think that as we’re now so technologically and scientifically advanced these days that we’d have developed cities akin to the Venus Project and that more cities, especially in the 2020’s would look like Singapore or better versions of it!

But lo and behold… no!

We’re still making concrete coffins to cover the land, it’s spreading like a virus and I don’t like it!  It’s not pretty and it’s certainly not healthy!

You know this technology is amazing and it really can be a much more amazing thing if we think outside the box and thought more inclusively about nature.  Never before has humanity bragged its sense of inclusiveness so dramatically as it has now, but failed to include other species within the spectrum of inclusivity.

Until we do so, maybe then, we will find alien life as they will know that humanity isn’t speciesist!  That should be a new word in the dictionary – speciesist, meaning disrespect of other species and anti-biomutualist. 

It’s something to consider.

It’s something also that is mentioned a lot in my books!

Specie inclusivity, bio-mutualism and so forth; why not?  Hardly anyone has touched on the subject to the degree I have.  Except of course, our precious David Attenborough, and to me he is a precious member of human society that if bio-technology needs to save one human in the world from death, it is him!  Forever may he live!

Thanks for reading!

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Gender pressures on children

People who write for children often presume that children are contemporary creatures and that anything retro they recoil from, I think that couldn’t be further from the truth – in fact, in my experience the children I have known and I have known a lot, especially as I used to work with children, they don’t really develop a sense of time and past until around the age of ten or eleven.

Children do have very prominent likes and dislikes that are very unique and different with each child, it is usually around the age of ten that they allow their peers and other influences dictate what they start to like and dislike, in other words, I believe around the age of ten they become more aware of other people and factors in life, they start to broaden their minds and often lose themselves in trying to be accepted by others.

My son has very narrow ideas about what he likes and dislikes and for the majority of people, they find him strange, but to me, I find him quite normal for a child.  My experiences with children show me that children generally are retrospective and like things from historical resources.  Some children gain the awareness of others earlier, some later, some keep true to themselves throughout their lives, but they are rare creatures.

Therefore some children become shy when you try to get to know what they really like, because adults and older peers think that it is either outdated or rather unusual, so they feel insecure in being honest with you about it.

For me, I remind Henry almost on a daily basis that everyone is individual and unique and therefore have different ideas about everything, that the only person you should ever please in your life in regards to what you enjoy, should be yourself!

Here is a little idea of what Henry loves and is motivated by, it might surprise you; Dolly Parton, Doris Day, Lady Gaga, Riverdance, steam engines, robots, wrestling of the 80s and 90s, British comedy of the 50s to the 90s, royal history of Europe, math and physics, cooking, baking, pink and fluffy things, tortoises and sea turtles (is an obsession, he cries whenever he sees them on TV), litter picking and sustainability, robot wars, cyberpunk art and lifestyle and current affairs. 

Henry also likes long hair with bangs for men or feather layer cuts.  He is also angry at the world for not accepting boys who wear pink and bright yellow, he is often shouting about why the fashion industry insists that boys must always wear black or blue or camouflage and denim, and he wants cotton suits and button up shirts and tailored clothing for everyday wear. 

He also wants to know why boys can’t wear perfume and use moisturiser and make up etc (I told him they can, but he raises his arms above his head, shrugs and says, but society says no)!

Henry was very upset once and had a meltdown when he won a prize at the school fete and was given a choice of two prizes, one was a rainbow unicorn soft toy or a cream rabbit, he chose the unicorn but the lady said, but you are a boy and the girl after you would want this and he got the rabbit – I agree with him that was totally unfair and against freedom of choice. 

Henry has a very hard time understanding why there are defined ideas about boys and girls and from what I understand he is not the only one at his school!  He best friends are a group of four lesbian and tomboy girls, they are very open about it even at the age of twelve and thirteen. 

At least half of the above are things he wouldn’t ever share with his peers for obvious reasons – he has given permission to talk about it here because he feels it could raise world awareness.

I had similar problems as a child, with the things that I liked – for example, they were mostly for boys and not little girls like me or were completely age inappropriate!

I loved dinosaurs, vampires, 1930s to 1950s fashion, monsters and bats and insects, comedy horror, Barbie, Lego, wrestling, gardening, writing, arm wrestling, marbles, woodlands and shelter building, helping dad with cement mixing and carpentry, roleplaying, super heroes like Batman and Superman, hard rock and metal music, glam rock, classical music, opera and medieval history, particularly ancient warfare and torture/dungeon procedures. 

I was considered an anomaly and my mother though she was a tomboy herself always tried to make me dress tomboyish but maintain feminine charm.  I never liked being forced to wear trousers because it was convenient for my mother to maintain my modesty that way!  If I had the choice my clothing would have been flowing skirts and dresses and I would literally look like a little gypsy running around as that was me, I was a nature’s child!

My mum wasn’t used to that as all my siblings were techno-heads who shut themselves away in their rooms and were obsessed with the latest gadgets and all I wanted to do was gardening, fort building and digging holes with the dogs, whilst scrumping from my neighbours overhanging our fence apple tree!

Yes the majority of the things I loved were boyish, but I wanted to be feminine nonetheless.

My niece is another example of how society shouldn’t try to define gender roles – my niece had an obsession with soccer and wanted to be a soccer player as her career, but society talked her out of it and told her to be a good catholic girl and calm down.

I just think that humanity has advanced so much in their diversity and acceptance of various things, but they are still supressing their children and it really shouldn’t be that way anymore!

So what if your son loves pink and rainbows and fluffy bunnies?  At least he isn’t interested in killing anyone and has a good sense of pride, justice and respect!

So what if your daughter loves soccer and dreams of being world champion at boxing whilst still maintaining the notion that, yeah, I want kids too!  Women aren’t as docile as you make out anyway!  Stop trying to pretend!

My son has mental health issues, he doesn’t want to exist anymore, because he feels the world will always have a problem with who he chooses to be, no matter what he does!

This post exists because I wanted to share with writers for children, that you shouldn’t think that kids are contemporary or actually want to conform with society ideas about what normal is. You should write for the kids you know, not what you think the general kid population might be like today!

A majority of the kids I personally know do cling to their devices, because it is the only thing that gives them attention, many of these kids explain that they feel refreshed when they find an adult who engages with them and their hobbies away from technology, but they are hard to find… please think about that!

Happy reading everyone!

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Books to buy

I need a place to list things I want to buy eventually for myself, I keep losing notebooks and stuff around the house, and wanted something quick to add it to. I need to find a way in making this post in particular private someday – as I am sure nobody really is interested in my shopping lists, lol.

The books below, written in red, meant I have got around to buying it!

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

The future of humanity by Michio Kaku

The Earth Care Manual by Patrick Whitefield

Arc of a scythe (the whole series) by Neal Shusterman

Underland by Robert MacFarlane

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Scrabble helps writer’s block!

I know I’ve already touched on this subject before, but there are other ways I stop myself from coming up against a brick wall when it comes to writing.  It’s a method of which involves what I call “constructive procrastination”.

What I do is I sit back and I enjoy a good game of online scrabble or words with friends, any word game really, and any words my opponent gets, I write them down on a list and I use them for poems or ideas for short stories.  For those who don’t play many word games, I sometimes notice there are themes that occur in games of scrabble unwittingly, you can sometimes see whole stories with what crops up, it can be amazing brain-storming.

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My Blogroll

Just found out what a blogroll can do (well four hours ago), so I’ve been fiddling around with mine all day, seriously, since 10am and the time is currently 14:14 ooh synchronization (spiritualists will like that).

I’ve added some links to my friend Erin Cooper’s artwork places, she’s all over the place right now and I had to e-mail her about a couple of places because she and I are so alike, she forgets username and passwords for some places, so I had to ask her if she remembered them before sending you to view them, because she tries to sell her stuff, bless her.

I also added one of my old and almost forgotten sites from DeviantArt, I am not very good at digital art, I am best with hand made stuff, but those are the things I knew how to put online, there’s a lot the world is missing out on.  I have to try and get back into the habit of doodling again.

Some of my stuff in regards to sketch art may look familiar to a lot of people because I tried to copy by eye some pictures that you can find in many “How-to draw” books, but I have in-cooperated those with either my own work or other copy by eyes to form an interesting picture.  My first ever attempt at a dragon on the DeviantArt page is the only example of this online.

You can see the picture by clicking the link below; personally I think it’s good, but I may have made the dragons chest look like it has a tumor or something, because it’s a little bloated looking in my opinion, I can see how I can thin it a bit, but I think I’ve lost the actual picture amongst my paper hoard.  Shock Horror!

My first ever dragon attempt

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taboos, cliche and offense

I’ve known some people who reckon they’ve got some very good ideas for a book, but, they’re afraid of offending someone with what seems to be socially taboo subjects.  These subjects range from, religion bashing, racism, a sexual orientation the author personally doesn’t have; a cliche idea of a group of people and even in some cases they’re afraid of the dialogue being wrong, not to mention class discrimination, bullying and abuse.  If that’s the main theme of your story, then why be afraid of the response?  You cannot please everybody all of the time, you are bound to offend somebody with something you may not have even thought of.

I have read books where if I read more than ten swear words before the second chapter I hang the book up if the character isn’t known for some kind of aggression earlier on.  That offends me, to the majority of the public it seems, they aren’t bothered by this kind of writing, but I am.

I have read books where they’ve done mindless violence to an animal that serves no purpose to the book, I sometimes reluctantly read on, but I am offended nonetheless.  I understand some people are offended of hunting, although I hate animal violence; I am not opposing hunting if it is for food and food only!

Some people seem to think abuse and neglect autobiographies should be removed from the shelves, I personally don’t.  For me, it helps me to overcome the abuse I experienced as a child, in some ways it can also help me get into the mind of my abusers.  It also helps me to respect the welfare more, I used to feel they’ve failed me, they had in a way, but it wasn’t entirely their fault, they tried their hardest for me, but they couldn’t gather enough evidence to pull me from that situation.  When I ask the people opposing these books why they’re against them, they believe that it might give abusers ideas of what to do to the children they’re in contact with, it could help them cover things up more by learning things from the abused child’s perspectives.  This is a serious concern, but I truly believe it helps victims more than it creates more predators.

From what I know of my abusers and from those I’ve read about, abuse comes spontaneously and compulsively, almost without plan, abusers seem to be opportunists rather than planners.

People who neglect do tend to plan on neglecting the child sometimes, or may have mental health problems where they didn’t realize or mean to neglect their child, in my case, my mother was too busy to actually sit back and think “Oh my God, my daughter is genuinely sick, got to take her to the doctors”, my mother was a career woman who truly believed that everybody was trying to hold her back and that I was hungry for attention and needed to be stamped on so I don’t get in her way, so she did medically neglect me to the extent I lost all the hearing in my right ear and needed emergency surgery to prevent an infection going into the brain, it was eating its way through the bone.  There were other medical problem she chose to ignore, for example, losing her temper and picking me up wrong and dropping me head first onto a concrete floor, a huge lump appeared on my head and I complained of not seeing properly and being dizzy and vomiting, she ignored me as making a scene to embarrass her in front of a friend and sent me to bed, for weeks I could barely see until a teacher became frustrated that I wasn’t understanding anything in class and seemed to have severely gone backwards since the previous term, drastically so and felt maybe I needed my eyes tested.  It turned out, I needed very strong glasses, I blame the accident on it, I was fine before and the reason why it took so long to pick up?  My mother wouldn’t let me go back to school until the bump had completely gone, claiming I caught a nasty virus and I had to look after myself at home all day whilst she and dad worked, this was before the welfare got called in.

This aside, all in all, there is a big difference between abuse and neglect, which isn’t widely known.  I was unlucky enough to be the victim of both but I won’t add much more detail than that here I have another blog which I will be started up soon, as a type of therapy for me and I’ll update you on that site another day.

So are these books wrong?  Are they right?  I can’t say, but for me they help me, for others it might be detrimental, but who are we to judge?

Salman Rushdie is considered a living legend in literature, yet his books sparked him to become the victim of a fatwa.  Yet he didn’t mean to bring about a negative response to what he hoped would be viewed as a book of comedy.  Some people just don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to their religion, but we can’t help that.  I we cannot control people; we cannot control whether they like our writing or not, so why sit back and worry?  Yes, OK, you could become the next literary victim of a fatwa or you could be murdered by a reader who hates you, you can’t sit back wondering what if, should I, shan’t I, because you’ll go crazy.  Just write and leave the criticism to the readers, you will be criticized a lot, but you will also be praised a lot too, you can’t tell which way the table will turn.

If you’re book has your characters having lesbian sex between two aliens whilst laughing their heads off at all our worlds religion and leaders and cultures and you individually pick out some examples to put in your book, you will offend a lot of people from those categories, but will that make it a bad book?  No, it will still be humorous, to those outside of the categories or those within who actually have a sense of humor.  So write it!

More later…

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